Spatial audio coding (SAC) addresses the emerging need to efficiently represent high-fidelity multichannel audio. The SAC methods previously described in the literature involve analyzing the input audio for inter-channel relationships, encoding a downmix signal with these relationships as side information, and using the side data at the decoder for spatial rendering. These approaches are channel-centric or format-centric in that they are generally designed to reproduce the input channel content over the same output channel configuration.
It is desirable to provide improved spatial audio coding that is independent of the input audio channel format or output audio channel configuration.